“At least you’re not a Jap,” said another soldier named Harvey Chandler, whom Christian had barely spoken to. “That would be a shitty life. To go through it all looking like a Jap.”
Christian didn’t answer, turning his attention back to the movie as the narrator explained how the Japanese were trying to take over all of Asia, killing women and children in their desperate fight for expansion.
“All this is true,” said Harvey. “If we don’t stop them, they’ll slaughter everyone in Asia—China, the Philippines, everywhere. We better get over there quick and behead them.” He made a motion with his hand, as if he were wielding a samurai sword, causing everyone around him to laugh, except for Christian and Dave Simon.
The sergeant in charge came over and screamed at them, and after the movie they spent the evening running ten miles in mud as slippery as cake batter.
When their seven weeks of training was over, Christian was told he’d be transferring to Oahu just before Thanksgiving. The only one from his barracks who would be going over with him was Dave, who Christian learned was a pacifist, as he was raised a Quaker by devout parents in Boston. He’d already been nicknamed the Dove by the other men.
“Sad you’re stuck with me on the train, the boat, and God knows what else they shove us on to get there?” Dave said to Christian as they polished their boots next to each other. Dave’s big brown eyes, which already had a terrified look about them, turned to Christian and stared at him hopefully.
“Nope,” said Christian. “I always wanted to fight alongside a pacifist.”
“Good,” said Dave, who had been drafted right before Christian enlisted. “Maybe you can keep me alive when I forget what the captains here taught us. I think I selectively weeded out everything that involves killing my fellow man.”
“But the Japanese soldiers are not your fellow man,” said Christian, the words feeling strange on his tongue. “I’m not saying we should slaughter civilians—of course not—but the soldiers are going to try to kill us if we don’t kill them first.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not our fellow man,” said Dave. “You’ll see. You might not think it now because we’ve been watching those videos that make the Japanese military seem like bloodthirsty pigs, but when you are looking one in the eye, you’ll see yourself in him, uniform or not.”
“I hope not,” said Christian. “Or I’ll die pretty fast.”
Christian and Dave made it to Hawaii the week before Thanksgiving, and all Dave talked about on their boat over was the wickedness of war and how ready he was for Hawaiian girls after being stuck with Texan boys for the past two months.
“I thought you were so religious,” said Christian, laughing at Dave’s dreams of girls in grass skirts.
“Just because I don’t want to kill people doesn’t mean I don’t want to sleep with women,” said Dave, closing his eyes and smiling. “One is love, the other is death.”
“Love?” said Christian laughing. “I don’t think we’ll be there long enough for you to fall in love.” But then he thought of Emi, and how fast he had fallen for her, and patted Dave’s shoulder. “Maybe you’ll prove me wrong,” he said before going on a walk around the boat.
Christian was ready for Hawaii because it was half a world closer to Emi. Missing her was so all-consuming, such a tug on his heart, that it had convinced him to leave his parents, to abandon Germany. He and his father had talked until the sun rose on Christian’s last night in Crystal City and had agreed that the war might end before the Langes were sent to Germany.
“It is possible,” his father had said harshly, still very angry at his son for leaving his fragile mother.
“You have to understand. It’s not my country,” said Christian after Franz kept hammering out his disappointment. “I have no ties there. You and Mom are going home, but it’s not home to me. I don’t want to go there and support a military I don’t believe in.”
“We aren’t going to support the military,” Franz had said, his handsome face creased and tired. “We are just going to live there and then return to Wisconsin when they’ll have us back.”
“I don’t have faith that they’ll take us back,” said Christian. “And I don’t want to be gone from here forever. As mad as I am at the American government, for this, for what happened to Mom and the baby, this is still my home.”
He had never mentioned Emi to his parents, never explained the source of his real pull to the Pacific. His mother needed him, she told him constantly, but he assured her that he would be there for her again. After he had found Emi. After the war.
The only other person Christian said goodbye to before he left Crystal City was Inge, who leapt into his arms, put her hands behind his neck and whispered that she would be escaping with him.
“Your parents have invited us to Pforzheim with them,” said her mother. “Now that you have enlisted, they say there will be more than enough space and everyone claims it’s safer than Berlin, where we intended to go. Your mother has really taken a liking to little Inge. I think she’s helping cheer her up.”
“Impossible not to be cheered up by Inge,” said Christian, shaking her mother’s hand.
“I know your parents are angry with you, but I think what you’re doing is very brave,” she said before Christian went to his parents one last time. “If I could find a way to leave Inge in America, I might. I think it’s safer here.”
“I will see you again,” said Christian, waving to her. He patted Inge on the head, as she cried inconsolably into his shoulder. He gave her a final hug and handed her to her mother before going to his own mother, so she could cry all over him, too.
If Texas had been an abrupt change from River Hills, Hawaii was a slice of an entirely different world. And here he didn’t have Franz Lange to help him navigate or his mother to comfort him when he failed. He had a pacifist who was terrified to die and seemed to want to spend the last weeks of his life surrounded by near-naked girls on the beach.
“Black on red. Seven straight and another seven upside down,” Christian said to Dave before they arrived in Oahu. He had drawn a picture of the Seventh Infantry’s famous insignia and given it to Dave just before their boat docked.
“I thought it was an hourglass,” said Dave, holding up the piece of paper.
“It is an hourglass. One made from two sevens,” said Christian, tracing the sevens on the paper.